Best and Worst Car Commercials of Super Bowl XLII

How the gearheads fared on the meatheads big day.

While at Meijer on Super Sunday morning to pick up some supplies, we happened to overhear an employee tell another that sales the Saturday before the Super Bowl surpassed any single day leading up to New Year’s or even Christmas. We would have tracked down a manager to confirm this, but there was no time. We had a pot to prepare for the chili cook-off.

With ad spots this year costing $2.7 million for 30 seconds, it was another successful and entertaining year for the ad departments of the usual Super Bowl supporters—Budweiser had people flying and breathing fire, in addition to the usual dudes hiding beer from their wives. After 2004, though, we watch the ads just to see if someone can top Ford’s “Pace car for an entire company” ad, which featured a GT ripping around at full honk and not much else. Any contenders this year? Read on to find out.